ABSTRACT
Children grow up with a radically different sense of self and relationships to others depending on time and place and where and when they were brought up. The study of child psychology or child development claims to offer especial insights into understanding early childhood, but has difficulty explaining these differences in children’s self-perceptions and habits. Child psychology as a topic is mostly a sprawling, and sometimes contradictory collection of experimental data about tiny and discrete aspects of infant and child behaviour. Practitioners and policy makers, and researchers themselves, have extrapolated from this data to describe and explain children’s journey or ‘development’ from infancy to adulthood, and to justify particular kinds of childcare and education practices. I argue that much of what is considered ‘scientific fact’ in understanding childhood is in fact biased towards a particular societal view. For instance, a key idea is that early intervention has a profound effect on later life. This may be partly true, but it is grossly exaggerated in much of the childcare literature. I go on to explore some common assumptions about childhood and parenting. There are pervasive views about the ideal family, the ideal child and the ideal surroundings that imbue understandings of young children. These views contrast sharply with understandings about young children in the South.
